In some networks, servers, routers, or other devices may maintain routing tables or forwarding tables for routing packets or signals to other devices on the network. These tables can define next hops for various destinations. When a packet or other data is to be routed to a particular destination, the device can identify the next hop information and send the packet or other data to the next hop for routing to the eventual destination. To enable this ability to lookup next hop information, all possible next hops for a particular device are installed in the routing table or forwarding table even if no traffic will ever be sent to or via the next hops by a particular device.
Because the complexity and size of modern networks continues to increase, a growing amount of resources on a network may be used to store and/or use these routing tables or forwarding tables. As the networks continue to grow in size and complexity, the sizes of these tables and the resources dedicated to supporting creation, storage, and use of these tables will likely continue to increase. Usage and storage of these tables can consume valuable compute and storage resources that otherwise could be used for other purposes. Thus, performance of networks may be degraded and costs of providing networking services may increase based on the storage and/or use of routing tables or forwarding tables.